


walk to the grave

by antagonists



Category: Gintama
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-14
Updated: 2016-04-14
Packaged: 2018-06-02 04:13:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6550324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antagonists/pseuds/antagonists
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Poor boy, Gintoki wants to say, but all he can think of is the fall of black feathers from the skies, half-eaten onirigi in his hand, glinting steel grave markers. Headless bodies, eyeless heads. Primly, he sips at his tea, tongue curling from sharp pain. “I see.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	walk to the grave

**Author's Note:**

  * For [perennials](https://archiveofourown.org/users/perennials/gifts).



> throws every heart imaginable at my smol friend elmer tysm for ordering aaaaaaa

*

 

 

When he steps into the hut, something brittle snaps under his foot.

 

 _Bones_ , he realizes. They litter the entryway and glow softly in the near darkness. The place smells like blood, like magic, (like tears).

 

“You reek of sake,” says a voice from the shadows. Gintoki turns to find himself facing the witch’s one glassy eye. Messy hair, gaunt cheeks, would probably attract women if he’d cared about physical appearances.

 

“You’re blind,” he says, mostly out of surprise. It would explain the lack of lighting in the hut, and lack of the usual sense of organization in one’s home. The witch holds up a demanding hand, and Gintoki drops the small parcel he’s delivering into those claw-like fingers.

 

“And you’re a ronin,” the witch sneers as if he can see Gintoki’s small flinch. “Desperate for work, are you?”

 

“My master passed away.”

 

“My apologies,” says the witch, not sounding very sorry at all. He then sweeps past Gintoki, navigating around the mess of skeletons with practiced ease. A flutter of dark magic trails in his wake, flitting upwards like butterflies before disappearing. “Come in, I’ll retrieve your payment.”

 

In the darkness, Gintoki has a bit of difficulty trying to step around the bones, the occasional parchment that he later notices he’s stepped on. He bumps into something like glass, and it tinkles softly as he swears under his breath; he feels so incredibly noisy and clumsy.

 

“You live here alone?” he asks, barely dodging a hanging wind chime. His voice seems loud, too, and he winces when the edge of his sandal brushes against something. “Kinda dangerous, don’t you think? Since these mountains see a lot of suspicious activity and all.”

 

They’ve been walking for a while, but the house seems to stretch on for a very, very dark eternity. He can barely see the witch’s figure ahead of him, and though he’s certainly not unused to working late at night, the crackle of magic in the air sets his nerves on edge. If he squints, he can almost imagine the pale wisps of demon fire floating around him. He grips at his sword hilt tighter and swallows at his uneasy memories.

 

“These mountains,” the witch scoffs. His voice is mocking, derisive. He seems to know that Gintoki is uncomfortable without his sight to rely on. “ _Dangerous_?”

 

Gintoki opens his mouth to speak, but finds a stack of cold metallic pieces shoved between his teeth. They don’t taste odd, so he clings to the hope that they aren’t fake or dirtied ryo. Without a word, he winces and pries them out of his mouth, pocketing them as quickly as he can. He feels eyes watching him, which is a bit ridiculous, since the witch only has one blind eye.

 

He sighs, realizing that he probably won’t be let out any time soon. “What did you need your supplies for?”

 

“Interested?” asks the witch, and a sudden flare of angry violet light has Gintoki turning his head away.

 

“Sorta hard to ignore the miasma you keep trying to force on me,” Gintoki replies drily, idly picks his nose. He tries to look past the witch’s robed figure and at the glowing spells, but the magic is too heavy and vicious; his eyes sting if he tries to stare for too long. He’s familiar with the white glimmer of purifying rites, knows the darker shades of vengeance even better. “Is this how you try to scare all your guests?”

 

No surprise the witch boy is sightless, then, if he’s been staring at evil for that long.

 

Once the smell of blood is thick and cloying in the air, the witch finally stands and falls back into the darkness. Gintoki has been staring at the black around him for so long that he startles slightly when the witch presses a warm and bulky parcel into his arms. They begin walking out of the shadows, steps mismatching and unsuited for each other. Behind him, the witch presses close.

 

“Bury that in the largest road you can find.” Against Gintoki’s shoulder, the witch’s breath is cold. Realization prickles at the back of his neck, and his lips part slightly to form words of taboo before pausing. “Where lots of people pass by every day.”

 

“I don’t work for free,” he says instead. The bloody nail indents in his shoulder don’t heal for weeks.

 

 

*

 

 

After the occasional side job, Gintoki often finds himself walking down the street where he had buried the witch’s small treasure. With each passing day, he feels the tension grow sharper, angrier, nearly ready to bite at his ankles if he continues to trod over the spirit’s sacrificial tomb.

 

He takes extraordinary effort to avoid that road whenever he can, now, prefers to trek through the woods at night than over some unforgiving, festering wound.

 

“The witch boy?” a sage muses as he sips delicately at some tea. “Shinsuke’s been up there for quite a while, since his parents left him in front of the village shrine. Always did have an unhealthy knack for hexing passersby.”

 

“His parents left him,” Gintoki echoes vaguely, and half-heartedly mimics the sage in drinking the tea.

 

The sage nods, humming pensively as he sets his cup down. The painted clay clicks dully over the table they are sharing. “Poor, poor boy.”

 

 _Poor boy_ , Gintoki wants to say, but all he can think of is the fall of black feathers from the skies, half-eaten onirigi in his hand, glinting steel grave markers. Headless bodies, eyeless heads. Primly, he sips at his tea, tongue curling from sharp pain. “I see.”

 

 

*

 

 

On a winter evening, when Gintoki manages to clamber up the sheer rock cliffs and through the dense forests to the Shinsuke’s hut, the witch boy is already standing outside. He’s underdressed in his simple kimono and geta.

 

“You’re late,” he says irritably. The curl of his lips solidifies his disdainful expression. He holds up a hand again, fingers curling around the large sack of foreign gemstones that Gintoki has been tasked with delivering.

 

 _It’d be in your best interests not to run away from me_ , Shinsuke had said earlier on while discussing their terms. _I’ll curse you into the netherworld if you do_.

 

 _I won’t_ , Gintoki had said, thinking that if he drowns himself in enough miasma, perhaps his bad dreams would go away. He sometimes considers asking to have his memories erased.

 

“It’s getting colder,” he says, eyeing the thin, old silk of the witch’s kimono. “You should buy another kimono, or at least a haori.”

 

Shinsuke waves him off and steps inside, briskly moving towards the black where Gintoki can’t follow so easily.

 

Once, he’d tried to accompany the witch inside as he had on their first meeting. Gintoki has no place to stay, and he’d rather stand in the chill of the witch’s hut than go hunt for another job. Shinsuke put up with it twice before his ire had flared, casting red shadows around him in an oblong maw. Despite his pale skin and thin wrists, he’d looked like a painting of hell’s greatest demons.

 

“Leave me alone,” he says succinctly, and disappears without a sound.

 

Gintoki sighs and begins the journey back down the mountain, shivering.

 

 

*

 

 

Three days before the new year, Gintoki is told to retrieve the buried head. He has to guide Shinsuke down the mountain, though he’s fairly certain the witch already knows his way down without any help. Barefoot, Shinsuke crosses the river that Gintoki has always been hesitant to go near. The waters reach up to his chest, but he voices no complaint once he emerges in his darkened clothes.

 

He must be freezing in the winter weather, yet he brushes aside Gintoki’s concerned hand and continues walking barefoot. The water trailing in his footsteps glow with the night sky, looks as though he is leaving a trail of moonlight behind him. He’s moving forward with his eyes shut, listening to the whisper of the dead around him, beneath him, restless souls dragging at his fingertips.

 

“Here,” Gintoki says, a bit unnecessarily, when they reach the path he’d chosen to bury the dog’s head. Despair gives the atmosphere a sickly pall, and had he not been so used to seeing death, Gintoki might have fainted. At the memory of his master’s severed neck, however, he closes his eyes and swallows.

 

Luckily, at this time of night, there are hardly any people walking in the dark.

 

Shinsuke does not speak once they retrieve the rotting, disfigured head. The thin tongue has become black and brackish, jagged like lightning. When the witch peels back the crusted eyelids, Gintoki sees the spirit’s frenzy caged within bone and decaying flesh.

 

At Gintoki’s feet, Shinsuke drops a weighty pouch that clinks upon impact with the hard dirt.

 

“For a job well done,” he murmurs quietly, blind eye open and searching the gaze of the inugami’s pain.

 

“Shinsuke,” Gintoki says, but the witch boy has already begun to walk back towards the mountains, still dripping moonlight. He guiltily pockets the heavy gold and seeks out a nearby inn. In the middle of the road, though he’d tamped the earth back down, a wicked scar marks the dog’s emptied grave.

 

 

*

 

 

“Shinsuke left,” Gintoki tells the sage over another cup of tea.

 

The sage hums. “I see.”

 

“I don’t think he’ll be safe,” he says. “With all that magic.”

 

The sage nods. “Poor boy.”

 

Quietly, Gintoki mimics the sage and sips at his tea as well. The hot tea scalds his tongue.

 

 

*


End file.
